Embroidered Eyebrows of Eve
Eve as reflection, Eve
as comment on Man. On
Fall, on Curious Girls. Eve as
self-portrait, Eve’s eyebrows
cutting or sly. All the colonial
girls’ samplers the same: same
tree, same Adam, same leaves
over barely imagined junk. Eve
got more attention: each girl’s idea
of beauty, with each girl’s idealized,
envied hair. Here red, here chestnut
curls. Here golden, gleaming, satin
stitched. But all of them, all these
Eves, once they have that apple, show
us something in their faces about
their artists, those little girls. Some
are stricken, some wide-eyed.
Sneaky as older sisters, or laughing,
dismissive as moms. These eyebrows
rounded arches, pleasantly surprised:
delicious. These ones
a deep V, scared to death
of death, of what this means.
